The former Celtics head coach appeared at the TD Garden Wednesday night for the Hoop Dream's fundraiser, an annual charity basketball game to benefit the Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD).

Rivers coached one team, which presumably adopted an African philosophy related to teamwork, featured mediocre-to-bad offense, executed after-timeout plays beautifully, elevated its focus as the stakes raised, and achieved more than the naysayers believed it could. Legendary Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan coached the other. He quite possibly spent the night arguing with Woody Paige on the side of the court (bad Around the Horn joke, in case you were wondering -- I'm pretty sure Paige wasn't actually there) while holding back encyclopedic knowledge of the 1972 NBA Draft in favor of crafting beautiful sentences perfectly depicting all the action.

In reality, as Rivers explained during an appearance last week on WEEI, neither of them actually does much coaching. They just kind of hang out with everyone in attendance. Rivers raved about the event, which allows people to play on the parquet floor for $10,000 per team.

"(ABCD is) just a great organization that helps a lot of people, with the summer jobs program and things like that, in the city of Boston," Rivers said.

He won't run the event forever though. Now with the Clippers, Rivers said he's hoping new Celtics coach Brad Stevens will take over his role with ABCD.

Because it seems to be "random Doc Rivers news day," the coach has also spoken at the Boston Red Sox rookie program, making an imprint on the current generation of Red Sox.

While speaking recently to CSNNE.com's Jessica Camerato, Will Middlebrooks and Xander Bogaerts both remembered Rivers as a powerful speaker. The coach referenced at least two of his former players, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, as examples for the young sluggers.

“He talked about Kevin Garnett a lot,” said Middlebrooks. “He talked about how that’s his favorite player ever and how much of a team player he was. Every move he made was for his team. That really stood out to me.” ...

“I remember how he talked about Kevin Garnett and his routine,” said Bogaerts. “(Rivers) said he’s one of the best players he’s had. He said he does the same thing every day and plays the game the right way.

He even said there’s a security guard and when (Garnett) comes to the games he says, ‘How are you Mike?’ or whatever the guy’s name is. Every day it’s the same thing, the same thing. Ray Allen also, [he] would take shots from here, here and here, the same thing every time. They’re very routine and I think that’s helped them a lot.”

For more about Rivers' speeches to the Red Sox, read Camerato's entire piece. Or maybe you don't care much anymore, since, ya know, Brad Stevens.